Blog

Figured it was time for another blog. Actually, it was time about five months ago, but with work and travel and being lazy and unmotivated, I kept putting it off until yesterday I got my domain renewal notice through.

Actually, I got my domain expiration through. Between new phones and passwords being forgotten and emails just never really checked, I'd missed the most recent reminders it was about to expire.

So the question was, why bother renewing it? I don't write as much on here as I used to, and when I do it just seems to be making excuses for not writing.

I mean, what to write about? Of course, for a while I had a countdown to the boat race here. I'd write about what I was feeling in the buildup, what I was buying (all the merino wool) and doing to get fit (absolutely nothing) for the race. Then the race came, and I blogged for my team, and got others on board to do so too, and just... I don't know. Didn't feel like blogging much after.

Because how to make it different? How to talk about the same old same old in a new, different, interesting way? I burned out a little on the race, thinking about all the different ways to talk about something that is, fundamentally, the same from day to day and watch to watch. I thought it might be different once I got to land. I would have so much more going on in my life to blab about. I'd be finished with this epic, life-changing event that had taken up so much of my life over the four years leading up to it, there would be months of self-reflection, sorting my ideas and feelings out, and putting them out there for the (minuscule part of the) world to read (that actually reads this).

And the life happened. I got a job (something I wasn't planning on). And then another. Write about the work? The jobs, the people, the things that are involved going on tour through foreign countries, or building and programming and operating a system for two one-off events? Well, between NDA's and the desire to keep earning a paycheque, there's honestly not a lot that's interesting to talk about. Well, there's the travel I suppose, but at what point does talking about all the different places you've been become more like bragging?

Politics? What can I talk about that hasn't already been said? Relationship? That's between myself and Amy. Money? I have some, but not enough or too much to say anything about. Life? still figuring that one out. Technology? I replaced the SSD drive in my laptop, but so?

And yet I renewed. I renewed, because I like owning the url. It's been my online identity (as a website, fb, email, or what have you) for as long as I realised that one should have such a thing. And because, ultimately, whether I feel the motivation to or not, I need to do this more often. And some days, there's a tonne of people might read what I post (tonnes being an old, imperial measurement in this context, subject to change and the feeling of the person measuring, and being about 45 in this particular case), and that'll be an affirmation. Other days, barely anyone will read. But I need to keep doing it, because the act of writing, typing, putting thoughts down, whether it's fiction, opinion, fact, or a string of words that technically work together but don't appear to have any relationship to each other, well, it's what I'm setting myself up for.

Three weeks today, I'll probably be drunk. Unemployed and drunk. To talk about Relationships, Money, Life, Jobs, and Technology briefly (after I said I wouldn't), I'll be heading back to Las Vegas to see about making this continent-spanning, time zone-juggling, day-counting thing have an actual shot in a normal scenario. I'll have a chunk of money in the bank. And I'm going to see about changing careers by being unemployed for a bit, and taking the time to actually be a writer instead of talking about being one. Using my laptop.

So here it is. My oft-repeated, never delivered, promise to blog more often. Once a week. About something. Mostly writing. Hopefully about writing. About how much I have, or haven't done, what's easy, what's hard, what's working for me, and what makes me want to throw my laptop across the room. And if it's not writing, then sod it, it'll be politics, or money, or life, or travel. But not the relationship, because seriously, that's ours to enjoy.

Why are titles so hard?

I've been spewing on the web for a while now. Sometimes it's worth reading, sometimes it's not, and I can't make any promises to spelling or grammar because of a distressing tendency to be Drunk. And British.

Some of it's funny; some of it's not. Same goes for relevance. There's some profanity.

I was born in Germany, and have lived in Salisbury, England; Baton Rouge; Louisiana, Eugene and Portland, Oregon; Salzburg, Austria; Las Vegas, and worked on cruise ships in Alaska, Hawaii, and the Caribbean.